Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Commercial office r/e has a bleak future. It's costly and largely unnecessary. It was facing a reckoning before the pandemic and now finds itself struggling to articulate a reason for its existence.
It's not going to disappear, of course. There will always be offices of some sort. But it will shrink, considerably. Those who don't need it and are adaptive will embrace work from home culture. Those old farts who couldn't innovate to save their asses (banks, law firms, various stagnant corporations) will hold onto office palaces, but pare their footprints.
No conscientious manager takes on a long term fixed cost he can avoid. If I'm running a consulting firm, or a financial firm, and you offer me the choice between: (1) A lease of a small, flexible area for staff to meet as necessary which compliments their working from home; or, (2) An expensive lease that requires staff to commute to work 9-5 at something they could do as if not more efficiently from home (possibly alienating them or causing them to work for competitors who allow work from home arrangements), which do I choose? Do I even have an option? How am I not compelled to select option 2?
ETA: Retail comm r/e is even more fucked than office comm r/e. On the positive side, however, commercial warehouse space is going to do phenomenally well as the shift to online consumption accelerates. Glory days for big box developers and builders.
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Like "the robots are going to take all the jobs," this sentiment has been going around for a long time and has yet to materialize. My guess is that people actually like having somewhere to go, with the added benefit of that place not containing the wife, kids and dog, will overcome. As it has up until now.
